October 29, 2014

Last night, I put up a post that started a discussion about why conservatives — or at least the class of conservatives in the Instapundit commentariat — think I'm a big liberal. I joked that these people ought to come to my hometown and workplace, where I am regarded as a big right-winger. I see the consistent theme: I make people feel that I'm not what they are. I trigger the shunning reflex. Or, to put it less self-effacingly: I've hit the contrarian sweet spot.

It was interesting to me to read the comments thread here on my blog, where people tend to write, I think, if they like hanging out, for whatever reason, including the stimulation to disagree with me. But there's one comment I want to single out for separate discussion, because it has 7 itemized ideas, really detailed and insightful ideas that I want to think about and that I thought you might find useful to examine.

This is what Carl Pham wrote in what was the middle of the night here in Madison, Wisconsin:

1. Only some see you as a big liberal, most see you as a big
fool, who was conned by Obama and will be conned again, or as a
cock-tease who pretends to get the male/conservo-libertarian concerns,
but returns privately to predictable female/collectivist tendencies.

2.
For a wide swathe of traditional men, the judicial/law professor
temperament is distasteful in a woman: it reminds them unpleasantly of
manipulation, deception, or disloyalty in women close to them -- one
they may have trusted to their regret. Indeed, I would argue it is
attractive to a fairly narrow range of men in general (aside from
outright betas who agree they need sensitivity training to be aware of
when they leave hairs in the bathroom sink and who wouldn't dream of
fondling an ass without politely asking permission first). Men don't
mind reserve in a woman, but when it starts to seem calculating (which
it has to be in the professor/judge role) it tends to trigger unease,
ranging to paranoia in some cases.

3. There's tension between
your occasional Woman/Womanhood As Victim ruminations and Instapundit's
Men/Manhood As Victim ruminations. It's a very unusual person who can be
neutral in the ancient battle of the sexes to win the Most
Misunderstood And Exploited prize, or even see the merit that there
might be in both sides of the endless argument.

4. There's blood
in the water. After eight long years of a baffling preference of the
majority of their fellow citizens for a smooth-talking prissy sleazebot
and mealy-mouthed collectivist nostrums, there's the sense that now the
red-blooded God-fearin' straight-shootin' black-coffee-drinkin' American
they thought they lived amongst has finally woken up and is about to
throw these changelings and cuckoos the hell out -- and the anticipation
raises the blood pressure, while the possibility of a slip 'twixt cup
and lip jangles the nerves. Result, partisan fervor.

5.
Instapundit himself has changed (perhaps partly because of 4 above).
There is less moderation and reflection, less non-political stuff, less
independent libertarian stuff, and much more reflexive Obama hate.

6.
Most bloggers and persistent commentariats tend to fossilize over time
(and the comments in that thread are highly stereotyped). I think it's
because it's extremely hard after a while for either the principal or
the dinner guests to back down from an iffy and misguided thought -- you
get savaged. So after time people tend to be less intellectually
adventurous and open. This is a well-known effect in business: the
larger the meeting, the more fossilized and traditional the positions.
You only really get true experimentation and adventure in the ideas
people express when the discussion is small, intimate, and private --
three adjectives that cannot possibly describe public blogging and
commenting.

7. You also have a streak of provacateur or the
intellectual flirt: you say things sometimes just (or mostly just) to
provoke reaction and hot discussion. That makes all kinds of sense in
your profession, of course. But, again, in a woman it can make many men
uneasy -- few like a tease, which is kind of what this is.

Funny that that's something we have in common--most liberals think I'm conservative, most conservatives think I'm liberal. I don't fit into either category, each side seems to recognize that I don't fit into theirs and so they assume I fit into the other. (My line is: I have no more use for conservatives than for liberals, but I do have more respect for them.)

I was disappointed when Instapundit opened comments--much as I like to comment, most blogs I read that make that switch suffer for it. The Instapundit has not been an exception. Plus, I hate that a blog I love attracts so few intelligent comments.

He's boring. Oh, I suppose it's interesting to you since he was "analyzing" you, but he really just told us a lot about himself. And who cares?

On to the real topic -- you may be a total rightwinger in Madison, WI, but that just shows what an MSNBC-deluded place Madison is. YOU VOTED TWICE FOR OBAMA, correct? Then how can you possibly think that you are not a mostly-just-not-entirely liberal yourself?

Reading this post out loud (to Meade), I realized this post should have the "cruel neutrality" tag and added it.

Obviously, I've regarded my own approach as cruel, so I can't complain if people feel hurt, though I've got to say that I regard it as a test of whether I'm interested in talking with you (in the Pham 5 sense). And I realize this tends to mean that my male readers are the 2 types identified in Pham 2.

The type of male who is put off and takes shots at me from the Instapundit bunker merges the 2 types of males and think they are are the type Pham called "beta." They can't picture the alpha Althouse male reader, perhaps because to do so would be to acknowledge something about themselves they don't want to have to see.

I don't have time to think about all the itemized points but #7 seemed right on its face. I think (I have noticed over the years) you like talking about yourself and like more hearing others talk about you, which is why this post and its parent post getting so much of your blog real estate.

tim maguire Plus, I hate that a blog I love attracts so few intelligent comments.

I've had that thought, too. They are almost never thoughtful or challenging, just regurgitating.

I must admit that I'm not sure that I understand why Althouse chose to single out this comment. Carl Pham has made some interesting observations about how blogs change over time, but I'm not sure how they are useful to the discussion at issue. Also, (and I say this as someone who is certainly far to the right of Althouse) he appears to have woman issues. His frequent digressions into what is "distasteful" in women certainly made him come across as distasteful himself, to this woman.

As a long-time Instapundit reader, I find #3 and #5 to be pretty astute. One way Glenn Reynolds has changed is in his emphasis on sexual politics, so I would say that #5 is predicated on #3.

I have felt, for some time, that the sum of the different ways Reynolds talks about sex is deeply weird. The sex as self-medication push, the sexbot theme, the shout-outs to the pick-up community -- all of these treat sex in a way both mechanical and misogynistic.

As for #7 -- I'm not so sure that men don't like a tease. History and art say otherwise. If you pursue items #1, #2, and #7 to their logical ends, it brings up a question that I have had myself: Why is the commentariat here so male/conservo? And why has it trended that way over many years?

Instapundit himself has changed (perhaps partly because of 4 above). There is less moderation and reflection, less non-political stuff, less independent libertarian stuff, and much more reflexive Obama hate.

Oh, so now principled disagreement is "reflexive Obama hate" ?

Well, fuck you. And you just completely undercut what was otherwise an interesting post.

It's really hard to say, because screen names don't always come across as gendered and one might pose as the other sex, and most readers don't comment.

I think readers of political blogs and the large number of readers who've come here by way of Instapundit tend to be male.

I assume the readership here is majority male, though it probably doesn't skew male as much as most political blogs, not that I see this as mainly a political blog.

I think I've been subjected to criticism for years from the feminist blogs, and I'm sure this means that many potential female readers are lost. I'm very familiar with the way people who lean left get the idea that those who don't signal acceptance of their ideology are toxic.

Being a provocateur and an intellectual flirt, isn't that what makes the blog so interesting to so many? Being a law professor is good training for this kind of thing.

For those paying attention, I think it's pretty clear that Althouse is a moderate liberal generally, with some particularly liberal social attitudes - gay stuff, womens' stuff, but not all stuff. She's not a typical liberal on abortion or "free sex."

She may have been conned by the Zero, but she had some good reasons not to vote for McCain who, let's face it, is a dimwit. She published her thinking on it. Lots of people wanted to vote for the first black president.

Unless I'm wrong, she voted for Walker and Romney. So, not a knee jerk big liberal. That person would not have done that.

In my blog reading experience, this blog has a high proportion of female commenters who are not easily dismissed for sheer self interested vapidity. Unlike many blogs that are about identity, like the feminist blogs are by definition.

You could take a poll on gender and commenting frequency, along the lines of:

o Male, comments never to less then once a montho Male, comments once a month to once a dayo Male, comments multiple times a dayo Female, comments never to less then once a montho Female, comments once a month to once a dayo Female, comments multiple times a day

I would look to the subjects that you have posted that have drawn -- by far -- the most passionate (and voluminous) comments: 'splooge stooges' and gay marriage.

For many, these two stances (and how they were presented -- forceful, with what some seemed to have taken as disdain for 'the other side') cemented you as a progressive in their minds regardless of any other subject: they positioned you unequivocally on one side of what is perceived as a hard line, and I believe your other posts, and your persona, are filtered through that dynamic.

These two subjects also seemed to have evinced a strong male/female component to the conservative/progressive positions. While 'splooge stooges' is obvious in this context I believe the gay marriage subject fits in it's own way. Many commenters took the arguments for gay marriage as emotion-based, rather than coldly logical -- a female versus male stereotype that, at times, can be correct; please note that I am speaking to reactions more than the source material.

The 'voted for Obama' aspect simply reinforces the belief derived from these two subjects. Indeed, Obama himself can probably be reduced to the female-emotion/male-logic template regarding his supporters and detractors, but that is its own subject...

"I must admit that I'm not sure that I understand why Althouse chose to single out this comment. Carl Pham has made some interesting observations about how blogs change over time, but I'm not sure how they are useful to the discussion at issue. Also, (and I say this as someone who is certainly far to the right of Althouse) he appears to have woman issues. His frequent digressions into what is "distasteful" in women certainly made him come across as distasteful himself, to this woman."

I loved point #2 and decided to frontpage this halfway into reading that point. I think he imagined how other people think in a way that felt right to me and was at least provocative. How other people think is the most interesting subject for contemplation.

To connect this to another topic from yesterday: It is the reason for reading novels. You only really get to see how the novelist thinks about how other people think, but the novelist is good when he can do this in exciting ways, including seeming to get it right or at least to make you think more deeply about whether you are getting anywhere near how it really feels to be someone else.

The reason for writing a novel, to me, is to use your own mind to imagine the minds of other, to inhabit them and play out lives for them.

One of the things I do on this blog is to take some evidence of another person's mind — perhaps something Hillary Clinton said — and to play out my ideas of what is really happen in there and also the effect or the intended effect on other people's minds

I know some readers rankle at that. How can Althouse possibly know? She can't mind read.

Within the law school milieu, some people don't want to have to talk about what's really going on in the minds of judges, even though that's: 1. The most interesting aspect of law, and 2. Understanding the mind you want to persuade is exactly what a lawyer needs to do to make an effective argument.

Trigger the shunning reflex? I don't think so. I based my comment on the stories you choose to post, the ones you ignore, and your commentary on them.

While I still go to Instapundit, I don't read Reynolds' own commentary that much. Just for the links, although he makes some good points in a broad sense, it's become kind of like a tabloid in some ways.

If Pham lacks self-awareness of his issues with women, this post should be a good mirror. I think the reason so many of your alpha-male readers are attracted to this blog is that you offer the intellectual stimulation of a really bright girlfriend - original insights about life, well-reasoned arguments, and a couple of forgivable weak points resulting from estrogen-induced sentimentality. To my mind, Meade got lucky.

It would take a good amount of space to catalogue your virtues, the few weak points are nostalgia for both the civil rights movement (the freedom of association tear-up!), ur-feminism (your girlhood!), and gay marriage, where you skip past the unintended consequences (your son!). On the balance, you are a national treasure. I hope you and Meade roll along a good long while.

Althouse and Instapundit are both social liberals. However, Althouse writes about abortion and gay marriage, and Instapundit only makes periodic comments about the latter. Can't recall anything he's written on the former, and, given his style, there's very little commentary by him, in general. His politics are mostly implied by the sorts of pieces he chooses to link. (I think, in a way, that limits him: he can't link with a "this is an interesting point of view; let's talk about it" because that's too subtle for his approach.)

Instapundit is libertarian, to boot, on economic issues.

On other issues, and in terms of her characterization of partisan politics more generally, Althouse is certainly right-of-center, but her blogging style doesn't really work without a certain contrarianness that engages its readers, and it's more conversational and reflective (even without the comments) than muckraking. She's not spending hours researching the latest scandal.

Jane the Actuary said: However, Althouse writes about abortion and gay marriage, and Instapundit only makes periodic comments about the latter. Can't recall anything he's written on the former

When I first started reading (around 2007), he commented on those a bit more. He used to frequently state that his idea of liberatarianism involved happily married gay couples with a closet full of assault rifles. He also used to comment in a pro-abortion way on a fairly regular basis, and for a while had a picture up of him humorously wearing one of those "I had an abortion" t-shirts. I found it a bit of a turn-off (though not enough to scare me away, I guess).

Now, I think that he's more interested in the free speech and similar issues, and seems to post more from the anti-abortion side (but from the perspective of having their rights to disagree on that trampled on, not from the perspective of necessarily agreeing with their posts). I've wondered if it has come with having a more conservative readership that he does not want to turn off now.

1 Cruel neutrality was transparent self-deception.2 Meade has made things better. Self-deception gets harder with a skeptic beside you. 3 Glenn and his commentariat have gotten more partisan since 2008.

Weighing in as a female reader, I agreed with Carl Pham's comment and don't get the other commenters who feel he was projecting his own misogynist tendencies. I felt he was pretty spot on with the gender stuff.

For a wide swathe of traditional men, the judicial/law professor temperament is distasteful in a woman: it reminds them unpleasantly of manipulation, deception, or disloyalty in women close to them

I have to admit that this is true. We all know that we can make all of the logical and dispassionate arguments we can muster to a woman, and she can acknowledge and event understand them, and then she will still do what she wants, based on some rationalization that she will not share because she knows we won't agree with her thinking, which will generally be emotional. Even if we can demonstrate that while her reasoning works in the context of a specific example, it will be harmful in the broader sense.

A perfect example is paying ransoms to terrorists. Logically, it makes no sense to give large quantities of money to groups that saw off peoples heads, but the emotional argument about the individual facing the threat right now wins, even if paying subjects further individuals to that threat in the future, or buys weapons for the kind of massacres as just occurred in Iraq this morning.

The emotional decision is demonstrably wrong. Just don't depend on a woman to let that guide her thinking.

… most see you as a big fool, who was conned by Obama and will be conned again …

If I'm remembering correctly, the vote for Obama in his first term was because McCain was too warlike. Perhaps she is realizing that electing a dove only encourages the hawks around the world. They see weakness and dithering and swoop down for easy prey.

And also the smile-inducing(from me) rationalization of hers that the Right would be better off for awhile without anyone in the Whitehouse. A right-leaning President would have attracted too much hatred from the Left, especially the MSM. But she got back on track the second time around and voted for Romney.

If you get too cutesy and try to second-guess events too much in politics you end up fooling yourself, I think.

Our hostess also fits my definition of an intellectual as someone who cares deeply about ideas and their significance. And from that emerges an interest in subtleties and nuance in politics and other things. Not a stereotypical traditional female characteristic. Maybe that causes heartburn in some circles.

I may be the only commentor who was married to a lawyer. Graduated with honors from law school and aced the Bar the first time around. Men I can tolerate but I cannot be with an unintelligent woman. She never nagged, bless her heart. Her reading comprehension was off the charts so she easily grasped subtleties but did not worship them. Last I heard she was holding hearings for the INS in DC.

Our hostess is neither GOP nor Democrat. She's an independent. Like me. Suffice to say, I do not hold THAT against her.

To my mind, Meade got lucky.

Meade is one lucky dog. He dared and won. If I had not lived a thousand miles away and been too old for her I might have tried the same.

I'm late to the discussion, but I really think it is as simple as what affects the perception of Mickey Kaus and Peggy Noonan. You talk the talk, but then voted for Obama regardless. This makes people suspicious of the sincerity of the talk. I (and I think a lot of others) just don't see how anyone who shows evidence of life above the shoulders could have been fooled by Obama, so someone who voted for him must have known what they were in for.

I never know what Althouse is going to write about. That keeps me coming back.

Political blogs are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. I think this blog skews older than most other blogs, which are read by 25-35 yo men. I like that. Older people have more diversity in what they believe because they don't care so much about belonging to some in-group. They also have some perspective about how things have changed.

The worst possible blogs have comments sections that are big, conformist circle-jerks. Balkinization is like that. Instapundit is like that. Everyone just poses to show that they are with it and on the right team. There are lots of cute names for the bad people on the other side, and lots of cliche phrases to show that commenters have been reading the right sources for news.

On topic, Pham has an appropriately misanthropic view of blog commenters who have the time and inclination to post on political blogs. Happy, well-adjusted men don't spend a lot of time typing on the internet. There are exceptions, and those exceptions tend to be the best commenters. The rest is a big soup of discontent.

Commenting is a narcissistic activity. Most comments are just "I think this." Few comments are aimed at persuasion. A great many are intended to discourage and intimidate. It's more about group norm enforcement than discussion.

There's no point in checking a block like instapundit to see what Glenn Reynolds thinks about a subject. It's easy to predict. Althouse isn't easy. Also, exactly how she thinks about it is going to be different. That, it seems to me, makes it a better blog.

"Althouse on gay marriage is dismissive of the other side. It's the woman's I know what I know feeling."

How it feels to me is: We've been talking about this for so long, and your side has been elaborated again and again, and my side seems so obviously right. I'm not that interested in hearing you say it again. I don't want to be rude, but the conversation is boring to me. I've tried to advise you to find a graceful way to move forward, but if you're going to stand there rechewing your old arguments ad infinitum, I've got other places to go.

I was managing a case (outside lawyers argued the case) with a judge who had been a US naval officer stationed in Japan. Since the case involved overseas shipments to Japan I made a point of getting one of the Italian captains on the stand. The testimony was interesting. We won the case.

"in my experience the only way for a woman blogger to please right wingers is to go all malkin or coulter; anything less is too ambiguous, and you will be continually tested."

You know, I've been blogging for a little more than a year myself, and with a tiny readership, but at various points I've poked around looking for blogs to model my own after, with an eye toward women. And there just don't seem to be too many small-time female political bloggers out there, that I know of, anyway.

I check out this blog fairly often because Ann strikes me as a reasonable liberal, something in short supply these days.

I was a liberal until 1980. Voting for Carter was the cold blast of reality that I needed. I prefer conservative web-sites because I am a generally conservative person with some socially liberal views and increasingly libertarian views. However, I don't want tools touch with what liberals are thinking. Ann strikes me as a thoughtful liberal.

Garage, ARM, the Crackhead ... not so much. Sometimes they are good for comedic relief. Sometimes they are just annoying.

How it feels to me is: We've been talking about this for so long, and your side has been elaborated again and again, and my side seems so obviously right. I'm not that interested in hearing you say it again. I don't want to be rude, but the conversation is boring to me.

How it feels to me is: You keep throwing the same hanging curveball over the center of the plate, then complain about how boring it is that we keep knocking them out of the park the same way each time.

( Like I said in my previous comment, I don't always resist the urge. )

I think this has more to do with Carol's inner mental model of what a right-winger looks like.

I are one. I don't read Coulter, though I do think that when her good friend was killed by terrorists on 9-11, a little understanding might have been applied to what she wrote only a couple of days later, while still processing her grief.

I don't read Malkin.

I don't read The Blaze

I rarely get a chance to listen to Rush, but still find him insightful occasionally.

Mark Levin actively disgusts me. Mostly because I don't believe he authentically believes what he says, or said the couple of times I have been exposed to him.

But it is way more fun to imagine that all the people on the other side are assholes, isn't it?

Actually to me your are a thinking liberal. However your post on the recall election seemed that your were sliding into conservative thought. So as you get older you seem to be more conservative except on the gay marriage items.

You also do like to tease or provoke so to keep the air of mystery. It keeps your blog interesting.

I was a casual reader to this blog until a few years ago, when Althouse set the hook. She wrote, "I live in a city where people point me out and announce to the group: 'Ann Althouse is here.' And not in a nice way. It's creepy."

This is how it feels to me as well:How it feels to me is: You keep throwing the same hanging curveball over the center of the plate, then complain about how boring it is that we keep knocking them out of the park the same way each time.

Maybe the reason you feel that your side is so "obviously right" is that you continually reinforce this feeling by trolling your readers for a certain kind of reaction, while ignoring the more substantive comments and questions that come up. Additionally you ignore bad behavior and bad faith on your own side, creating your own epistemic bubble.

Althouse voted for Dukakis in 1988, from what I remember her writing about her presidential votes over the years.

I'm actually interested in why Dukakis over HW Bush. That's the one presidential election in my memory lifetime (I was a baby in 1972) that I thought and still think is beyond debate. Dukakis has been the least presidential candidate since Wendell Wilkie.

"One way Glenn Reynolds has changed is in his emphasis on sexual politics, so I would say that #5 is predicated on #3."

I think Glenn has been influenced by his wife's focus on the War on Men. She wrote an interesting book.

I see the frustration in many with the people who voted for Obama the empty suit because he was black (sort of). I could understand that and was not surprised with the results. I was surprised that he got enough votes in 2012 to avoid the reaction to the disasters he has created.

Having seen what the Democrats could do in 2012 with a very sophisticated GOTV system and a modest amount of fraud, I fear that Hillary could overcome all the excellent reasons she should be retired to fund raising.

This is how societies die, or at least atrophy as Japan has atrophied the past 25 years. I fear the 2012 election was a tipping point and that Romney had the skills to get us out of the death spiral and now it will be too late if we ever elect a good president.

Hemingway was asked how someone went bankrupt. He said, "Slowly, then suddenly." I think that is true of nations also.

I do appreciate the comments section, which is absent from left wing blogs that block any dissenting views. This leads the left to think it has all the good ideas. They never debate. I used to read and comment at Washington Monthly when Kevin Drum was the blogger. Then they banned me for reasons that were never explained.

I don't think Prof Althouse will vote for Hillary, although the pull to vote for a woman is likely strong. I think her dislike of Hc is strong enough to overcome this.

I think her reasoning for voting for Obama was very strained though, and unconvincing to many of her readers. Therefore it seems like a rationalization rather than a real rationale, and readers who see it that way are likely to extrapolate that she will create a justification to vote for HC as well.

And I think Prof Althouse is a rare example today of a thinking liberal (and only left of center on some issues) which draws a lot of conservative commenters.

I haven't been around here that long but I imagine that many commenters were drawn here for that reason but then gave strong push back on a number of hot button issues where Althouse leans further left. Which was noted by the blogger, and exploited for effect.

I am familiar with the hackneyed and overused slip of the tongue twixt saying.

From years of observing its use I can say without hesitation that only assholes and pretentious academics use it. They think it is cute and, better, a sign of sophistication. It is a marker for a silly person

"How it feels to me is: You keep throwing the same hanging curveball over the center of the plate, then complain about how boring it is that we keep knocking them out of the park the same way each time."

So you think it's a home run when people refer to the dictionary definition of marriage?

Henry: I have felt, for some time, that the sum of the different ways Reynolds talks about sex is deeply weird. The sex as self-medication push, the sexbot theme, the shout-outs to the pick-up community...

A bunch of nerdy young guys sitting around on the internet talking about sex the way Reynolds talks about sex would be pretty normal. It's only weird because he's awfully long in the tooth to be stuck in the silly sperg stage. Lot of that going around, though - it's just one manifestation of the infantilization apparent everywhere.

...-- all of these treat sex in a way both mechanical and misogynistic.

I wouldn't say "misogynistic" (even if we disregard that "misogynist", like "racist", is now only a tantrum-marker). I think "retarded" covers it.

Ha, reading your response to "Ignorance is Bliss" makes me realize I didn't read his comment well before endorsing it.

I don't think people hit your curveballs on gay marriage out of the park. I think mostly you get boring, predictable (and sometimes bigoted) responses which is exactly what you hope for. You don't blog on this issue in way that's conducive to real debate, because you simply want to declare the debate over.

Now that we're talking marriage, by the way, the next stage in the "gaymarriage" discussion is really to address what marriage is about, in the first place. Is it just the ability to "legally" use the terms husband/wife, become legally "next-of-kin" and obtain whatever other benefits the government provides?

It seems that there are plenty of people out there promoting exactly that, a sort of do-it-yourself approach, in which marriage has only as much intention for permanence or sexual fidelity or "union" (that is, combining your lives, including finances, vs. each party being on their own) as they wish to give it, and no more.

I kept well-clear of the "let's label Althouse" thread because it seemed to be a topic that would shred much more heat than light.

American politics are the least ideological of any in the West. The typical vote reflects mood and short-term interest more than philosophy, even assuming that the typical voter's mind even functions in a manner that can be so described. Simple mental inertia more often accounts for "party loyalty" in this country than critical thinking, which is not to say that those "swing voters" are paragons of reason. In my experience these people are just as foggy in their logic as rock-ribbed Republicans or yellow dog Democrats.

Some election years give us a peculiar mix of candidates which encourages non-rational voting. 2008 was such a year. Given John McCain as the nominal conservative a surprising number of habitually conservative voters ticked the Obama box. Why?

The comprehensive answer is TLDR. The short answer is combination of McCain's seemingly erratic political history, and cognitive dissonance.

I chose McCain, not because I liked him. McCain was and remains one of the most maladroit politicians the Republican's have ever nominated. Nevertheless McCain was running for the presidency. Obama was running for deity.

@RecChief: yes, I can see that. Still, she said 'it's over" what, once? Even accepting that "It's Over." equals "I Won," and granted she blogs about the topic of same-sex marriage frequently, how is it reasonable to claim that she says "it's over" "every few days"?

Roger Sweeny said...

"One of the best things that happened to the Right was Reagan's loss of the Republican presidential nomination to Gerald Ford in 1976, and Ford's loss in the election to Jimmy Carter."

Reminds of the story Reagan liked to tell:

The parents of two brothers — one an incurable pessimist and the other an incurable optimist — took their sons to see a doctor in the hopes of curing the boys of their respective conditions. The physician started with the young pessimist. He took the boy into a room brimming with a mountain of new toys. "These are all yours," the doctor said. Immediately, the young pessimist burst into tears. "What's wrong?" His parents asked. "If I play with the toys, "the boy sobbed, "surely they will all break and be ruined."Next, the doctor tried his hand with the young optimist. Instead of toys, the doctor took his patient into a room filled with a mountain of horse dung. "This is for you." The doctor told him. With that, the boy smiled, so wide he could have eaten a banana sideways. Excited, he raced to the top of the mountain of manure, where, with his bare hands, he began digging into the pungent heap. Baffled, the doctor and the parents looked at one another quizzically, "Son," the father asked." What in heaven's name do you think you're doing?" "Well, the boy replied, with all this horse dung, I figure there's got to be a pony in there somewhere!"

If you close your eyes and listen close enough, you can almost hear Reagan's "Well..."

So I'll just say, Well... with all this manure left by Obama, I figure there's got to be a Ronald Reagan in there somewhere!

Stopped reading immediately after I saw the term "betas" in the quoted comment.

I have contrarian tendencies and I like Althouse, fwiw. This is not based on any political position, but my perception of a mix of general character traits. How and why those traits translate into various positions I may agree or disagree with is interesting, but secondary.

For example, I'm far more forgiving of women of a certain gen, like Hillary, who were not completely independent in their rise to the top. Men do not make it as 'independently' as that gen were asked to make it. They make allies among other men. Women were in the position of being new and in need of allies/acceptance in unwelcoming circles of power made almost entirely out of the gender they had sex with. Of course you're going to get some Hillary/Bill situations, even from purists; It creates resentment, but was inevitable.

Just because FoxNews lets Alan Holmes talk every now and then doesn't mean it is a far-left network. Is Althouse still being sold to advertisers as one of the top conservative blogs in the nation? Follow the money; it will always point you to the answer.

And when people say that Ann is going to vote for Hillary no matter what, does that mean they think Scott Walker won't be on the ticket in 2016?

@Meade,So she typed those words once. From here, It looks like the same attitude is in most of the posts about same sex marriage. Dismissive about concerns over consequences, which, by the way, I see a NY court just ruled that an Uncle and Niece can marry. Is that unintended consequence of Gay Marriage? I don't care about the frequency of the posts. You said you couldn't see 'the end zone dances and I wanted to kow if you really couldn't see anything construed in that way. On the other hand, I only know Althouse from what I see written here, whereas you live with her.

I don't think it's accurate to characterize you as a "big liberal." "Reflexive liberal," maybe.

It does seem pretty clear that your opinion of conservatism stems less from an interest in classic conservatism than from observing the commentary on your blog which frequently reflects "reflexive" conservatism or libertarianism, my own included.

The people who vilify you for your conservative leanings, or whatever, are the progressives who expect college professors to tow their line.

For the past 8 years, up to an including this very day, she has been actively campaigning for Scott Walker - madisonfella

Umm, she has been providing a side of the story that one doesn't get from the mainstream media. She has been pointing out some atrocious behavior on the part of the Wisconsin "deep state" which has it in for Walker.

If getting the truth about the whole Walker situation in Wisconsin = "actively campaigning" then great! What does "actively campaigning" for Burke look like? Not pointing out the prosecutorial abuses against Walker?

Is Althouse still being sold to advertisers as one of the top conservative blogs in the nation? Follow the money; it will always point you to the answer. - Madisonfella

Are there ads her on Althouse? I mean besides the importunings to use her Amazon portal?

Do you even think about what you write? You should take a deep breath after you leave Kos or DemocraticUndergound and ask yourself some simple questions before making yourself look like a fool. After all, I checked for ads before writing this.

Pham's #1 isn't accurate. Our hostess isn't a "big liberal". Nor is she a cock-tease pretending to a view she doesn't really embrace.

Most boomers were classic liberals at one time and many still are, but sometime later decided that contemporary lefties have agendas that are toxic. Still, habits are hard to break, and this is particularly true when environmental factors such as the faculty lounge and Madison, in general, are nothing more than an ideological hothouse that unquestioningly cultivates an emotional embrace of leftie-ness.

I credit Ann with her willingness to articulate the other guy's point reasonably well. In the process, she has broken with the blinkered conventions that contaminate leftie thought.

However, this much, I think is also true about Ann. All things being equal, she'd vote for someone like Ed Koch, a liberal with sanity. Or Patrick Moynihan.

But then, under the right conditions (but not the same conditions), I would too. However, none of that breed currently exists. Today, what we see is all pretty much insane.

I never said that she is being paid off by these ads (Tho, the fact that is how your thought process works speaks volumes), rather it is being pointed out that this blog is being sold to advertisers as one of the top conservative voices in the country, while you are insisting she is a lefty liberal libtard.

Both statements can't be correct. So are you wrong or are advertisers being lied to?

I'm pretty sure there have been multiple instances of Althouse triumphalism on gay marriage. I'll admit that, like most intensely annoying things, they probably don't happen as often as I remember them happening.

So, blog readers (or political blog readers) are mostly white and mostly male. What does that say about blogs? What does that say about the habit of reading and commenting on blogs? And why must it say something negative? (As seems to be the implication whenever any activity is engaged by mostly white males.) And what does that say, if anything, about those who don't engage in such activities? And could it possibly be a negative thing that all those folks who aren't white males don't read political/cultural commentary blogs? Why is the opposite always implied? Are the habitual readers of Jezebel more virtuous? (I think we know the answer to that question.)

McCain never once led in Wisconsin polls in 2008 where Obama ended up beating him by 6%. If I had been registered to vote in Wisconsin in 2008, I likely would have voted for Obama over the "lesser evil" McCain.

That was 2008 guys. It hasn't been 2008 for nearly 6 years. Let's move forward, shall we? I mean, would it kill you to scratch up a little charity while eschewing the malice? How about giving her a little credit for striving to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations?

"Consequently there was a long period during which nearly every thinking man was in some sense a rebel, and usually a quite irresponsible rebel. Literature was largely the literature of revolt or of disintegration. Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Dickens, Stendhal, Samuel Butler, Ibsen, Zola, Flaubert, Shaw, Joyce — in one way or another they are all of them destroyers, wreckers, saboteurs. For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all, it was a cesspool full of barbed wire."

As you appeal to the authority of Orwell's genius, remember that 9 years after writing Notes On The Way, Orwell developed a notebook known as "Orwell's List". It was a contribution of his to the collective effort to push back post-war communism.

Fine with me — push back communism. Particularly Sovietism.

But that List also reflected what seems to have been Orwell's willingness to let first drop into that "cesspool full of barbed wire" — Jews, blacks, and homosexuals.

And I suggest you take "it's over" in the same sense as I think was meant by the blogger — the power to use the law to repress the equal rights of same-sex oriented Americans "is over". Whether you choose to continue fighting that particular culture war or you choose to accept the new national order, you simply do not have numbers.

She wasn't saying your traditional religious values must be abandoned but that American politics have most likely changed permanently and it is now time to move on, to fight — winnable — political battles.

Shaming is what many lefty/Progs here in Madison engage in. It's part of what Orwell called goodthink. Not unlike your echo chamber over there at Lem's where you have Dolan and Haz, Spinelli and Fox and others serving as your thoughtpol who help keep you free and safe from thoughtcrimes aka, independent thinking.